


Echo and Narcissus

by threewalls



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Alternate Character Interpretation, Alternate Timelines, F/F, F/M, Meta, Post Season 5, Prison
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2002-05-20
Updated: 2002-05-20
Packaged: 2017-10-15 03:32:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/156593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/threewalls/pseuds/threewalls
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dawn wants to know what she is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Echo and Narcissus

"Visitor, Lehane."

She blinks, then slides off her seat and follows the guard. Angel's her only regular, but always unofficial and the sun is still shining. About three months ago, Cordelia'd come by, but that sort of special doesn’t happen too often.

She doesn't recognise the girl right away, watches her lean on the little shelf, staring up. Maybe it's Red, grown the dye out and kept going. Who wears velvet in LA degree heat? But the girl turns and her face is wrong.

Small. Young. It takes her only two seconds to fit the girl into the pecking order and five to remind herself that it's just a game, not habit. Not instinct.

"I'm Dawn Summers."

Suddenly, pretending she can't see B in the girl's nose, in the shy smile and growing curves under blood-coloured velvet. She closes her eyes, wanting the girl as distant as the phone's tinny voice. Acid coats the back of her throat.

And, for a just moment, she holds two sets of memories.

Peach walls. Windows wide enough. A convenient tree. Pillowslips that smell like B’s shampoo. That damn stuffed pig. White picket fence. A Mom. (A sister?) A grave.

"You probably don't know why I'm here."

"I knew it happened, when it happened. Like I'm her fucking dog."

"Faith... everybody loved her."

She almost retorts, 'not like that,' but the girl's eyes are sincere and glass.

It's also true. The reason she and Angel sometimes kill each other instead of talking. Why Cordelia came the day after, to tell her instead of waiting for dark.

"Mr. Giles went back to England. Willow's kept busy, researching legal documents for my Cousin William--"

The girl's practiced, no pauses for code words. Good. She'd hate to admit on air to knowing about Johnny's stack of cassettes and his noticeboard of other people's photographs.

"Who?" she interrupts.

"Long time ago, he went by 'Spike', but he's clean now." A mischievous smile, equal parts veneration. Not competition, the stray thought comes. "He drove me here, to LA."

She nods. "Heard he'd gotten spayed."

The girl giggles and leans forward, but not far enough with that neckline.

"We're staying at Angel's hotel. We just showed up yesterday. He was surprised, especially when I asked where William could park the car."

She wishes she could have seen Angel's face then, and the fight. Light and dark, matched like--

"I've thought a lot lately, about a lot of things, and maybe I didn't, haven't gotten to know some people as well as I'd want."

"So, I borrowed her--clothes, that once. I'm not your sister."

The girl straightens her back and shoulders.

"I'm not my sister, but you kissed me. Just the once."

Another surfacing (new?) memory from a lifetime ago, when she was B and a kiss that tasted like cherry cola.

"If you came all the way for an apology..."

"I was thirteen and wallpaper, Buffy's and possibly breakable. Everybody loved her, Faith."

"Thirteen! Jesus, how old are you now?"

The girl nibbles her lip.

"I saw this movie, right. There was a doorway to Hell. To lock it, you need a key but because it's not your regular sort of door, the key's this whole bunch of mystic energy. And somebody who shouldn't, hears about the key and the monks guarding it turn it into something else. A teenage girl, for whatever reason."

"Priests," she snorts. "Same everywhere."

And the girl smiles, once.

"To keep the key safe, they send it away, put it in a home and change the memories of a whole bunch of people to pretend it had been there all along."

"But somebody found her, anyway?"

"I only look fifteen," and the girl's hand almost decides to touch the bottom of the glass. Suddenly, the velvet makes sense, even if it fits too well to be borrowed.

"These fake memories start when?"

"When? Everything before last summer. But you do remember, right?"

She knows she looks like shit, fluorescent light superimposing her face over the girl's.  
Her hair is half-clean and matted. Soap instead of shampoo, fingers instead of a comb.

Dawn's looking at her with back-seat eyes. It's almost funny.

"Not married, don't get conjugal visits. Sorry."

She grins, all insanity and cartoons. The girl blushes too red and, hopefully, some cracks appear in the pedestal.

"Angel, um, he said that--"

"He knows, but don't."

"That's pretty much what he said." The girl's brittle smile, familiar now and only partly Buffy.

"Know who's up next?"

"They found her in Italy."

"ETA?"

"Um, London has a Hellmouth, too."

"So. Thinking they need me again? And they sent you?"

The girl rummages through her cute, little handbag, removes a postcard and thumps it against the glass.

No, it's a photo. It's cold against her finger reading the words. Anne. Who'd have thought?

"It looks--permanent." It’s fucked, but she has to ask.

"Willow tried. I could have told her..." the girl shakes her head, starting over, "I tried after Mom, you know."

"Didn't work?"

"It worked," the girl grimaces. "It was one of those B movies where the zombies, you know, eat brains. I heard Willow got all, like The Exorcist, but that didn't work. And they didn't even tell me, William, or Mr. Giles until after."

Ironic, really, if it took B's death for Red to admit B made her head spin. B didn't care that Red liked girls--she remembers getting a week in solitary. B never liked reality invading her sunshine perfection.

"This isn't really the place for the things I want to talk about." Angel said that, too, the last time she’d seen him behind glass. "If I wrote to you--” this time, the girl stops cold.

"Try Angel if you want a pen pal. Better yet, talk to him, if you want distance and sympathy."

Don't ask her to make decisions, little girl. Don't give her the opportunity to fuck you over.

Don't look like that.

Damn.

"Look. Postcards are always good, just not from Florida. 'K? He's weird that way."

The girl looks blank and weary behind the portrait set of her shoulders. So, she repeats herself, word for word.

"All right?"

*************

"Now, you're sure about this, little bit?"

She lands lightly, bent knees and slayer healing absorbing the impact, and wonders idly whose idea the chaperone was. Her souped-up hearing gives her a minute to arrange her nonchalance and another to watch them unnoticed.

Spike knows how to wear black, and she sees his influence in the girl's prudent navy sweater and jeans. Or maybe not, she thinks, following the outline of the girl's bra straps against the tight weave.

"Um, hi."

"Hey."

"Are we flipping coins?" Jay asks, sprawled on the lower bunk. "Or can I call dibs on David?"

Jay's a number to the system and calls herself Jane Smith. She thinks it's a stupid name for a spic girl, but her own name's ironic enough not to throw stones.

"It's Spike."

"William," the girl corrects, almost immediately. Spike growls and the girl shrinks.

"Girl's a friend of a friend," she explains, as Jay slinks forward to press herself through the bars.

"If you say so, Lehane. I was hoping your Angel-boy was pimping." Jay crosses herself as she says his name. "You're sure you ain't my present?"

"You're the toll-girl!" Spike's hands go to pockets in his duster, eyes alert on the lock. She wonders if Angel explained what "Florida" means, if he had to.

She's never asked how Angel gets in and out, without notice, so many times. She's only gotten joking flak from Jay, who would prefer to watch even if Angel didn't come baring gifts.

"Two chocolate bars and two, eh, one and a half packets of menthol lights."

Jay reverently takes a bite of Snickers and the first drag of cigarette comes out, "Ave Angelus," and Spike laughs as he steps away from Jay’s expression of faith.

"So. Spill," she demands.

The girl looks nervously at Jay, who tilts her head just slightly for permission. "I don't squeal on Lehane's people. She got my back, I got hers."

"I, um-- I want to talk to you, Faith, just you. Please. William has cards, if your friend knows Poker."

Jay giggles.

"Now, Dawn--"

"I'm sure."

She feels even more like an animal now, watching the girl fingering the bars, all sweetness and sacrificial. She could kiss the girl, hell, she could fuck her through all the spaces between.

But instead, she follows the girl to the opposite side of her cell and calls back over her shoulder, "Jay, you're playing for lights."

"She's... friendly," the girl says, watching her chaperone deal.

"Survival skill," she shrugs. "Why are you here?"

“I came to LA to see my dad,” the girl whispers. “Social services let William have custody of me, as next of kin, since, you know, Buffy and Mom. But that couldn’t be right, right? I wanted to surprise him... he wouldn't even see me. He didn’t know me. His secretary yelled at me for 'disrespecting his grief'. Only one daughter, and she’s dead.”

"Grief screws up people." She says it twice, pitching her voice higher to be heard.

The girl shakes her head.

"People are forgetting me. I’m forgetting me. My very first memory is meeting Willow and Xander the first time Mom was in hospital. I was ten. I'm dissolving, or dispersing or undoing whatever made me Dawn. No more door, no more key, you know? Buffy died for me, so that I'd go on, but I'm not. I can't remember anything before Sunnydale, and it's not even safe there anymore without...”

She hears a low growl to her right and Jay’s uniform shifting position. Her hand has pinned the girl’s against the bars, the nervous movement distracting. She’s beginning to wonder if Jay wasn’t right about Angel.

"Talk a little louder and let your friend in on this?”

“We’re not friends or anything. He just promised to look after me.” The girl shifts her hand round, and they're pinned palm to palm.

"Whatever. Vamps have contacts for this kind of weird shit."

Everything inside her is telling her to pass the girl onto Angel. She's a better follower, her watcher the first /woman/ she'd followed, indifferent to who she'd be watched doing. Angel's her patron, her postman, her counsellor, but Mayor Wilkins was just as good to her.

It’s tempting to think of herself as a weapon, not a warrior, because a knife isn’t blamed for whom it bloodies. But she is. This place isn’t penance, it’s sanctuary--routine, regular meals and simple choices. It’s learning to be a warrior again without distractions, but she’s not there yet.

"You know why I’m here, right? I killed a guy. Knifed, wooden knife?" The girl swallows and nods. "And some other stuff. I’ve got more life sentences than you’ve had kisses."

“Kisses," the girl whispers. "You do remember me.”

The girl’s hand is warm, unlike the bars, numbing cold against her arm and breasts.

“Yeah, I said that before. I remember you, kid.”

“My name is Dawn.”

“I had to touch you before you figured out I was hitting on you. And you made this cute little noise when I backed you into that table and then bent you over it.”

And when she let you go, B's name was on your lips, a moan, not a plea; that had been unforgettable.

"It's funny," the girl says, "but it's like the only memory I've still got of just Buffy and me, is really me and... you."

It’s not a kiss. Dawn bridges the inch-width distance and their teeth meet, and then cold air. She hears Spike swearing, hurting an innocent and finally lets go of Dawn’s hand. She pulls herself back through the bars.

“We’re leaving. Now.”

“Spike!”

He can't drag Dawn, apparently. His free hand claws at alternate temples. It's déjà vu, in a way. Like B, Spike's anger mirrors in his eyes. It had been so strange seeing that reflected in her own face.

“No buts.”

"But you don't even ask, you just--maybe I wanted to!"

"Then you're having a chat with Willow and Tara when we get there; we're still leaving."

Something small flies into her line of sight; she catches a neat packet of cards. Jay smiles, but stays crouched in the far corner.

"From what I hear, Red could wipe me from her memories just like that," she snaps her fingers. "Fake girl, fake memories. She's half there."

She'd meant to say 'halfway'; sometimes intuition bites. She throws the cards at Spike, because now the girl's looking at exit signs instead of struggling. Summerses by any name are just as fickle.

And because reflections depend on the mirror. B died for the girl, and the bits of B mixed up inside this constructed girl died with her. Ditto for Mom. It makes sense and she can tell herself the girl doesn't need her help, just more mirrors.

"Hell," she whispers to herself, listening to them leave, "I'm not even sure I'll remember her."

**Author's Note:**

> This is old, and very likely Jossed.


End file.
